OK, I feel like less of an idiot this week than I did last week.
We had skills lab last night and I did fine. Didn't miss any critical criteria, and correctly surmised our medical patient needed to go to the hospital and convinced her to do so as the in-charge. I got a sinking feeling when she described the transient headache, pain in her thoracic spine. I thought to myself, "this day is going to end with an EMS incident report, and all of us will be taking antibiotics." I made the decision to transport, let the patient know I was worried about meningitis so she needed to seek more treatment, and as we were wrapping up I asked, "so what did you have?" She got a little smirk and said, "meningococcal meningitis."
Lucky guess? Nah.
What can I say? I'm that good.
(Taylor will disagree with me here and just say that I watch too much House, ER, and MASH...)
Actually, I was just discussing this with an old friend over the weekend. His son contracted meningitis which progressed into septicemia. His son's blood vessels were breaking down and letting blood leak out into his tissues. He was two years old. It happened twenty years ago he should have died. I cannot imagine living through something like that with one of my boys. He's a damn strong dad, with a damn strong kid, for sure.
Trauma assessment went OK, but I still need to drill it into my brain.
Got smacked down AGAIN by the same instructor as last week. I'm taking too long to get the oxygen going. I mumble and he can't hear me verbalize. Blergh.
Other than that, a very successful night's work. I'm way more comfortable with assessment and might get through this section. Written exam tomorrow night over all 8 chapters of section 3 (Patient Assessment).
So, still need to:
Finish flash cards for vocabulary
Finish flash cards for patient assessment steps
Memorize pediatric vital signs
Write out and answer chapter objectives (thanks EMS Newbie, for that suggestion)
...and probably a million or so other things I'm forgetting.
Wish me luck.
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